Another politician comes out against child predators

It's somewhat ironic that Illinois state Sen. Matt Murphy is using an online chat to promote his bill to ban MySpace, Facebook and personal blogs from computers in public libraries and schools, the (IL) Daily Herald reports.

Murphy is hosting an online chat tomorrow at 5:30 CST on his website, senmattmurphy.blogspot.com. Even more ironic, Murphy's site is itself a blog, hosted by Google, even though his bill would prevent students and library patrons from accessing blogs.

“The intention here is to advance a dialogue about the role the state can play in helping parents protect their kids,” said Murphy, a Republican.

The US House last year acted to ban social networking sites from schools and libraries but the measure died in the Senate. It's unlikely the current House will pass such legislation again, so Republican Murphy wants to move at the state level.

Such measures are largely viewed as politicking not policy-making. It looks good with a politician's base to say they protected kids from predators.

In most local school districts, however, these Web sites are already banned. When students at Northwest Suburban High School District 214 log on to a banned Web site from a school computer, they are greeted with a shrill buzzing and a flashing warning on their computer monitor.